The Raven Movie Review

I am a huge Edgar Allan Poe fan to put it mildly. I have read his collected works multiple times since my Dad introduced me to him when I was ten years old. Cask of Amontillado and Tell-Tale Heart are two of my favourite of his stories, he was an amazing author with a great talent. If you haven't read any of his stories, do so, it will be an adventure you will not soon forget.


Today I went to go see the film The Raven starring John Cusak, Luke Evans, Alice Eve, and Brendan Gleeson. Cusak plays Edgar Allan Poe who gets brought into an investigation of a serial killer who's killings all have themes from Poe's stories and poems. The killer takes his fiancee, Emily, during a party and tells Poe that he will leave him clues as to her location at each murder he commits and after each crime Poe must write an article for the local paper that is part fictional and part truth about the situation between him, Poe, and his fiancee; if the articles are not published then Emily will be killed.

They way they opened up the movie was a really interesting, they started it saying that hours before Poe died he was found on a park bench not in a good state. The then show Poe sitting at that bench they then pan up to the sky and show the moon in very little light then transitions into the moon in complete night and jump back to where the murders began. There were two major things I enjoyed about this movie, first being that it was interesting seeing a theory about what happened during Poe's last days, it was really fun to see how they thought it happened. Second thing was it was really fun watching the murders, as morbid as that sounds, and figuring out which of Poe's stories the murderer was bringing into these killings. Nothing was too blatant about telling which story it was unless it was said so by Poe himself.

I know that this movie was set during the 1840's but some of the costumes looked really corny, the firemen's outfits were very over the top, but the clothing during the Costume Ball was really well done, other then the firemen and a few other costumes they were all done really well. There is not too much that I did not enjoy about this movie, those few costumes were really the only thing that bothered me.

My love for Edgar Allan Poe may be clouding over my better judgment, I haven't really talked to anyone else about the movie so I don't know other people's reactions but mine is a pretty solid score of:

8/10

So what should you take from this review? Check out the movie and Poe's works if you have the chance.

As always, follow me on Twitter @Nait93

Time for Change

Hey there everyone, the past day has been crazy eventful for me, not in a good way really. Last night a huge argument erupted in my house hold and as a result my mom and I are no longer living where we once were. Currently we are trying to figure out where this is going to take us and what we should do to move on with our lives, no matter what happens though it will be for the better. Time for change I guess; a new chapter of my life is beginning and I need to see where it's going to take me. 

On a much lighter note a few months ago I mentioned that my friend Justin (@KingCauti) and I were going to start up a review blog. Well that didn't end all that well, clearly, and we kinda moved away from that and nothing really came up about it again. Here we are months later and he and I are gearing up to ACTUALLY start a reviewing blog. We'll be covering everything we love from comics to movies, books to music, wrestling pay-per views to plays, anything we want to talk about will be talked about, if we manage to get interviews from people we respect and admire you can bet your bottom dollar that they will be up there. It's going to be launching mid May, or as soon as we come up with a witty name for it, knowing us it probably will only be witty to the two of us. My personal blog will be staying over here for the time being however so there will be links to the new blog all the time. I'm really excited to get this going, I hope you all support me in this, and with any luck it will go well.

That's it for today, a nice quick blog. So follow me on Twitter @Nait93

And now for some music!

Three Doors Down    Lifehouse    Hinder    Skid Row

Bronies and Voting

So it's been a pretty weird weekend, but one that was really good too. Friday night I went off to the Elephant and Castle with my Bronies to get to know each other a bit better we had a really good night filled with lots of laughs and other things. Saturday I went to the JP AME anime convention, it was their first year and I think it went very well! I got another chance to do a show with the 404s, it went really well and I'm really enjoying getting all of this experience doing improv, it's a lot of fun, if you get the chance to ever do improv, get on it!

After the convention was over I headed off to a very good friend of mines place and we got ready for the season finale of My Little Pony, yes I like My Little Pony, it is a fantastic show, I'll address that in a later blog. The season finale was actually really good, well plotted out and everything you expect from an hour long episode of MLP.

Tomorrow is election day in Alberta, go out and vote, make an informed choice, know who you're voting for and make the choice you believe is right for you. Voting is part of your duty as a citizen of a democratic country. So find your local polling station and go out, vote, and then go to timmies after, it's super easy and doesn't take time out of your day, 5 minutes, tops.

Well that's really all I've got for tonight, just thought I'd throw up a short blog before the weekend was over.

Follow me on twitter @Nait93

And let's get some Pony music up in here:

Discord    Smile    Flim Flam Brothers   Find a Pet

[Insert Creative Title Here]

I've got a few things to talk about, so I figured a Blog post would be a good place to talk about them. First off I'm tired and have no creativity left in me so that's the best title for this post you're getting, my last few titles were pretty good so I'm entitled to have a crappy one I think.

So first things first, if you haven't done so already check out my review of the film Lockout with Guy Pearce HERE. I'm going to be doing a lot more review posts but not just movies. I've been thinking of getting into the reviewing business and in order to do that I need practice and I need to start getting myself out there more. I'm going to be reviewing movies, books, plays I see, and, once I've caught up, comics. It's something that I'm really excited to be getting into and I hope all of you that read my blog, though they are few and far between, will support me in this and hopefully I'll get some more readers. Once it gets into full swing I'll be moving my reviews to a new blog but that won't be for a while yet; when that happens this blog will just be for my daily doings.

A while ago my friend Scott got it in his head that he would like to try his hand at stand up, he'd get a group of people around him and tell really funny life stories and he'd get a bunch of random jokes he'd throw in there. Finally a couple of days ago he uploaded his first stand up video, the quality is pretty poor as it was filmed on our friends iPad. So forgive the wonky sound and its not a paying crowed so there’s some banter going on, which personally drove me nuts but all in all it was enjoyable. HERE is a link to the video, please take the time to watch it and hit the like button, if he gets 5 likes he'll upload my personal favourite story of his, how he got a fork stuck in his leg.
He's pretty new to the Twitterverse and doesn't tweet a lot but follow him on Twitter @scottbjerky

Finally something fun that has happened in my life over the last few weeks. Last year I became friends with a member of a great improv group called The 404s and he said that he wanted to start a new cast up where we both live as the main cast for Alberta was 3 hours south of us. Fast forward about 6 months and Wes has started doing monthly workshops, and then at last month’s workshop he invited us to do a show at a local anime convention last Saturday. We did the show and it went really well considering how terrified I was to do it and I'm doing my second show this Saturday at another anime convention. I'm super excited to be doing this, improv has been something I've loved since I first saw the 404s years ago and now I'm working on becoming a part of one of my favourite improv groups.

Well that's all I've got for tonight, two posts in one day, that's pretty good for me.

So until next time, follow me on Twitter @Nait93

And now...MUSIC:

Hang Drum    Poets of the Fall    All That Remains    Ok Go

Lockout Movie Review

Alrighty ladies and germs yesterday I got the chance to check out the movie Lockout staring Guy Pearce, Maggie Grace, and Peter Stormare. I haven't done a ton of reviews lately, or a lot of blogging for that matter, and I really want to get into the reviewing game so I'm gonna keep up to date with the movies I've been seeing so here we go.

The year is 2079 and a massive space prison has been built that holds 500 of the world’s most dangerous criminals all of whom are kept there in a cryogenic sleep. The president's daughter, Emilie, played by Maggie Grace, goes up to the prison to see how the inmates are being treated and too see, first hand, if the rumored side effects are actually as bad as they are said to be. While she is up there a prison riot starts and she is taken hostage along with a group of people employed on the prison. Meanwhile on Earth a man named Snow, played by Guy Pearce, is being sentenced to 30 years in the space prison for conspiracy against the United States and espionage, which he has been wrongly accused of. When word gets down to Earth that the president's daughter has been taken hostage during the riot they send Snow up to save her, and in doing so he will be given his freedom.

At the beginning of the movie I was not impressed by the CG used in the chase scene, it looked terrible and just a couple steps up from the original Tron movie's effects. Then when we got into space and were shown the prison I was blown away by how beautiful it looked. There are some absolutely great action sequences in the film that are a lot of fun to watch. This movie did not take itself too seriously, which I loved, it kept making me rethink if it was an action movie or a comedy, every few minutes there are scenes where you're laughing hysterically and then they go right back into the action and that was something I thought was really well done and well put into the film to make it more enjoyable to watch.

For the first two acts the movie really delivers with good character building and really interesting concepts and a plot that could go places, I was really looking forward to seeing how everything came together at the end of the movie. Then the end of the movie came and I was very disappointed for a couple different reasons. First off as the movie is coming into its last half hour the action amps up and everything just happens. It happens so fast that it was clear they either ran out of money or time to make the movie and it just wraps up WAY to suddenly, and this is sometimes alright, if they have tied up all the loose ends in the movie, if that happens, I'm totally okay with a fast ending. Sadly that did not happen...at all. By the end of the movie there were so many loose ends that I was left totally unsatisfied. There were a bunch of cool things that they threw into the story that I was excited to see explored and explained and at the end of the movie they just seemed to have forgotten anything was happening and wrapped it up and slapped the credits on the end. It was rather disappointing.

So with all that what are my thoughts on the movie? See it if you are interested in seeing a cool action flick, but be ready to be disappointed at plot holes. If you liked the Fifth Element, see this movie, there is a lot of similarities.

I give Lockout a 7.5 out of 10.

Guy Pearce was great in this movie, he's definitely one of Hollywood’s least utilized actors. Him and Ewan McGregor need to be in more films, get on it all you movie people!

That's it for this review folks. Follow me on Twitter @Nait93